The group stage of the Nexus Cup Annual Finals has drawn to a close, with the four groups playing out a single round robin from the 30th of November to the 5th of December. However, no teams have been eliminated from the tournament. Instead, the eight teams that placed in the top two of their group have advanced to the winners bracket of the playoffs, with the remaining eight sent to the losers bracket.

Korea has dominated the Annual Finals so far, with all eight winners bracket teams hailing from the country. The Chinese teams will have their work cut out for them, including Nexus Cup Summer Champions Miraculous Youngster, as a single loss will eliminate them from the event.

Matches will be played in a best-of-three maps format, besides the loser's bracket final which will be played across a best-of-five. Finally, the grand final will be played across a best-of-seven maps, with the victor of the winners bracket automatically earning a point in the grand final. Mirroring the group stage, the first map of each match will be played on Overwatch's newest map, Junkertown.

Competitors in the event cannot afford to slack off, as only the top four teams will receive a share of the ¥150,000 CNY (~$22,700 USD) prize pool, as detailed below:

1st: ¥80,000 CNY (~$12,116 USD)

2nd: ¥40,000 (~$6,058 USD)

3rd: ¥20,000 CNY (~$60,700 USD)

4th: ¥10,000 CNY (~$1,515 USD)

The playoffs offer a further opportunity to view the newly built Korean and Chinese rosters, as well as the chance to witness Miraculous Youngster in action before the team takes a step back from Overwatch in 2018. Matches start off with Lunatic Hai vs Runaway and LaoYinBi vs ViCi Gaming, starting at 6pm and 7pm China Standard Time respectively on the 6th of December. The complete playoffs schedule has not yet been announced. Tune into matches live at http://cc.163.com/nexuscup, watch the vods at https://space.bilibili.com/25851902 and keep track of the scores on the event page.

I'm visiting china right now, everytime I talk about overwatch people tell me it flopped and the "real deal" is pubg now (along with arena of valor). I also saw pretty big overwatch 50% discount advertisements in the metro stations.
However China is gigantic and Netease is strong, I'm pretty sure overwatch will still be played for quite some time here. Eventhough it's not the most popular game here, if a small portion of the population plays it it still accounts for a large number of people

Edit : I feel like they invited too many koreans teams, they are injecting money into korean overeatch by doing so. They should have invited one or two korean teams to make it interesting while still injecting money into chinese ow and keeping the dream real for chinese players

Many professional teams have been disbanded,at the peak we had 40 teams ,but now there are only 12 teams left.
big org like IG,OMG,WE,ROYAL,NEWBEE all quit,OWPS got low viewership since summer ,then ow teams can't get any sponsorship,even MY need to play PUBG at the same time to keep the team running.